The Diary of Queen Mothy | ||
A Long-ass Update written @ 7:48 PM on April 30, 2005 Read this and laugh:
The funniest part is my apparent appitude for cooking, but damn right I don't follow recipes-- you don't need recipes to make toast, Lucky Charms, Ramen noodles, grilled cheese, and chicken fingers, which equals 80% of my diet. And that parenting and teacher part? Ho ho! Anyway... It's been the month from Hell, thus explaining my absence from Diaryland, save for that bizarre avant-garde play I wrote in five seconds in my last entry. Yet although it has been the month from Hell, it's one of those things where it "could only happen to me" circumstances. First-- the amusing stuff. Dad thinks he's about to get engaged to Omah. Now, you may be thinking, "Wow, that was fast." Yup. Normal people would. But my father, bless his heart, feels that the time is long overdue to jump into his third marriage, having only officially divorced my mother seven months ago, dated Omah for five or six months tops, and feels ready to not only marry her but to take on a father role for her two kids, aged five and seven-ish. He took the kids to Chuck E Cheese's a week or so ago-- and didn't even bother to invite me to play, the inhuman wretch (just kidding, I don't really care, but it does scream midlife crisis when he took little Kendra skeeballing, what he used to do with me... Harkening back to another life, now are we?). He called me the other day to make sure "it would be okay" if he married Omah. To tell the truth, I knew it was coming. He's so predictable! "Sammy, I have something I need to tell you." "Let me guess, you and Mom are having marriage issues." "Sammy, I have something I need to tell you." "Let me guess, you're moving out." "Sammy, I have something I need to tell you." "Let me guess, you're getting divorced." "Sammy, I have something I need to tell you." "Let me guess, you're dating someone." "Sammy, I have something I need to tell you." "OH COME ON, NOW. Have you not by now recognized a pattern here?" So now I'm trying to swallow the idea of having a step-brother and a step-sister and a step-mother and all that jazz. Meanwhile, things are pretty serious between my mother and Paul. Paul has two daughters, I think, one of which is around my age and a bona fide bitch on wheels, and if those two get married then my life will have taken a turn toward the surreal. I am so amused with everything. I'm half-sorry I moved away to college-- clearly I'm missing the drama here. *** Another amusing story: my artwork was censored by the university! This sordid tale began in February, when the director of the play I set designed for, knowing I was also a graphic designer, asked me to design the poster for the play, too. There were many benefits to this plan: one, no more wretched clip-art posters done by the wretched designers at University Printing; two, portfolio work for me; three, good advertising! Everyone won. So, because the play was about the Holocaust set to the tune of Alice Through the Looking Glass, I broke a mirror, photographed it, and superimposed a swastika into the broken mirror shards a la Photoshop. It looked really cool. It kept with the theme of the play (a viewer instantly knew what it was about) and it satisfied our marketing needs for a bold ad to attract theatre patrons. All well and good, right? Exactly. Our marketing guy liked it, and so he whisked it off to University Printing... Which refused to print it, deeming it offensive. Our chairman got involved and said, "Bastards, this is what we want for our ads." Actually, he didn't use the word "bastard," but he did get the Dean's approval too. I even sent in two different versions of the same poster so University Printing could choose which one was "less offensive." I mean, really, the play is about the goddamned Holocaust. After the chair got involved, I assumed everything was all well and good once again. Little did I know that this poster was rising through the university hierarchy: it went to the Dean of Student Affairs, who didn't know what to do with it; it went to the Provost, who didn't know what to do with it; it went to the vice president, who didn't know what to do with it; finally, it landed on the desk of the President of the university. And he didn't know what to do with it. So he sent it off to an "advisory panel." The advisory panel didn't know what to do with it, so they contacted leaders in the Jewish community asking their opinion on its offensiveness! Well, shit, if you present it out of context, duh, of course it's going to be offensive! The Jewish leaders said: "The swastika, presented under any circumstances whatsoever, is as offensive as calling a black person the N-word." Goddamn. Them's fightin' words. Meanwhile, I had no idea any of this was going on until the Jewish leaders rejected it, the advisory board rejected it, the president rejected it-- and the theatre department politely asked me for a new poster design in less than a week, dear God in heaven. That was over Easter weekend, when no art store in America is open, so I ended up buying a couple of sticks of charcoal, pastels, and that brown package paper you send stuff through the mail with-- and I made a new poster with less than two day's time to figure out a new design, execute it, scan it, and add type. But there you have it, kids: censorship on the campus of an American university. Free press, my ass. I could have fought the ruling if I wanted to, but I didn't want to bring that kind of controversy about during our festival season, and I was so busy with classes and graphic design and set design stuff that instead of harboring bitterness for The Man and the Powers That Be, I spread it! To everyone I know! I must have told over a hundred people, students and professors alike. I even e-mailed my high school journalism teacher. I turned it into an educational experience and a badge of honor. Because when you think about it, the poster was a success: it elicited the reaction I was looking for, even if my diabolical marketing scheme backfired on me. Artists have to be rejected before accepted, right? Good things have come out of it, though. The theatre department is letting me design all the regular season posters from now on, and might even pay me. My my. This will be good experience. I am looking forward to next year. As for the play and the festival itself, it was a success, by my lights. The department seemed very pleased by my set design, and I was personally very happy with the outcome. I'll post pictures here sometime of my work. I have a renewed confidence in what I'm doing, which I heavily needed. It was a tough month, though, and what I write here cannot do justice to explain the turmoil and trouble in which I got myself. The art department awarded me a scholarship but because I was already on a university scholarship, they told me I would have to reject it due to "policy." Well, I did what any sensible person should have done and looked up the policy-- only to find that one didn't exist. So I wrote this letter explaining my position and why I needed the money for my fifth year of schooling (cuz it's going to take me longer than four years to graduate), and the department misconstrued what I was trying to do and accused me of trying to bring them into heavily legal matters dealing with defrauding and whatnot. Which was the last thing I ever wanted to happen! How would do that help my case, if that were true? I just want to finish my degrees, not overhaul the system. I was miserable for four days after that happened, but I finally took care of things and cleared my name and the whole thing was sorted out and happy ending and all that. I didn't get to keep the scholarship, but things got so bad that I only wanted to save my name and reputation so I really didn't care in the end. That's the short version of the story anyway. The full version is much longer and outrageous and full of things that I am not legally allowed to relate here. Besides, I would rather forget the whole thing happened. Right now it is the weekend before final exams. And I am here instead of studying. This is a good thing because I haven't had time to stop and catch my breath since spring break. I don't know if you can imagine what it's like to be constantly doing something between the hours of seven and midnight everyday, with no hope of doing anything else for fear of falling behind. It's certainly no way to live. I wouldn't wish my lifestyle on my worst enemy. I'm not suffering from burnout. It's physical exhaustion. Today I slept until one in the afternoon for the first time ever because for the first time I could. It's been a crazy semester. But it's almost done. My last exam is Thursday. I only have three real exams out of seven classes, which is lovely because it means I'll have time to catch up on painting that I've wanted to do. My sunset project is moving along nicely. I won a $1500 grant to buy supplies. I'm behind in my painting work but making progress nevertheless. I get to keep my studio space for the summer while I'm working at school, too. It's going to be a productive summer! I'm props designer/scenic artist for summer dinner theatre again; I'm set designing for Ovation Theatre Company; doing odds and ends work for pay in the Arts Council; hopefully I'll have an art show again this summer; and, most exciting, I might be going to Arizona for the hell of it. The cats that I care for periodically during the summer, their owners, my neighbors, own a house in the mountains outside Phoenix or someplace, and they offered it to me whenever I'd like during the summer to get away. They kind of know about all the crazy stuff that's happening with my family, selling the house, and school so they wanted to give me a break. I wasn't sure if I'd ever take them up on their offer, but I think I will at the end of August. Mom and I will take off a week or so, fly to Arizona, and I'll paint desert and mountain landscapes. I've never seen the desert or been further west than Chicago, which doesn't really count as being "west." All in all, I'm really optimistic right now. The semester has been up and down (mostly down), but the worst of it is over and life is moving on. I'm taking life by the proverbial horns and twisting it in my favor.
A Bit of History ~ And Onward! L'Amour Toujours! - August 08, 2005 | ||
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